The digital reference project is designed to assess and demonstrate the effectiveness of providing live virtual reference services over the Web in the states of North Dakota and Hawaii. The lead organization is the Library of the Health Sciences at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The Hawaii Medical Library (HML) will operate as a full partner. Other performance sites will be the three clinical campuses of the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences. GOAL The goal of this project is to eliminate barriers of location, time, and technology to high-quality health information for health professionals, health students, and the public throughout the states of North Dakota and Hawaii by employing live, interactive, human-mediated, virtual reference software on the Internet. Objective I. To bring health-related information in digital format to health practitioners, health students and the public through the utilization of virtual reference software. Objective II. To establish a core of health sciences librarians who will be proficient at delivering human-mediated digital reference services. Objective III. To promote use of the digital reference service to health professionals, health students, and the public in North Dakota and Hawaii.